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  • From the Tips Box: Pre-installation Prep Work Makes Service Pack Upgrades Smoother

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Last month Microsoft rolled out Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and, like many SP releases, quite a few people are hanging back to see what happens. If you want to update but still error on the side of caution, reader Ron Troy  offers a step-by-step guide. Ron’s cautious approach does an excellent job minimizing the number of issues that could crop up in a Service Pack upgrade by doing a thorough job updating your driver sets and clearing out old junk before you roll out the update. Read on to see how he does it: Just wanted to pass on a suggestion for people worried about installing Service Packs.  I came up with a ‘method’ a couple years back that seems to work well. Run Windows / Microsoft Update to get all updates EXCEPT the Service Pack. Use Secunia PSI to find any other updates you need. Use CCleaner or the Windows disk cleanup tools to get rid of all the old garbage out there.  Make sure that you include old system updates. Obviously, back up anything you really care about.  An image backup can be real nice to have if things go wrong. Download the correct SP version from Microsoft.com; do not use Windows / Microsoft Update to get it.  Make sure you have the 64 bit version if that’s what you have installed on your PC. Make sure that EVERYTHING that affects the OS is up to date.  That includes all sorts of drivers, starting with video and audio.  And if you have an Intel chipset, use the Intel Driver Utility to update those drivers.  It’s very quick and easy.  For the video and audio drivers, some can be updated by Intel, some by utilities on the vendor web sites, and some you just have to figure out yourself.  But don’t be lazy here; old drivers and Windows Service Packs are a poor mix. If you have 3rd party software, check to see if they have any updates for you.  They might not say that they are for the Service Pack but you cut your risk of things not working if you do this. Shut off the Antivirus software (especially if 3rd party). Reboot, hitting F8 to get the SafeMode menu.  Choose SafeMode with Networking. Log into the Administrator account to ensure that you have the right to install the SP. Run the SP.  It won’t be very fancy this way.  Maybe 45 minutes later it will reboot and then finish configuring itself, finally letting you log in. Total installation time on most of my PC’s was about 1 hour but that followed hours of preparation on each. On a separate note, I recently got on the Nvidia web site and their utility told me I had a new driver available for my GeForce 8600M GS.  This laptop had come with Vista, now has Win 7 SP1.  I had a big surprise from this driver update; the Windows Experience Score on the graphics side went way up.  Kudo’s to Nvidia for doing a driver update that actually helps day to day usage.  And unlike ATI’s updates (which I need for my AGP based system), this update was fairly quick and very easy.  Also, Nvidia drivers have never, as I can recall, given me BSOD’s, many of which I’ve gotten from ATI (TDR errors).How to Enable Google Chrome’s Secret Gold IconHTG Explains: What’s the Difference Between the Windows 7 HomeGroups and XP-style Networking?Internet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To Know

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  • Travelling MVP #4: DevReach 2012

    - by DigiMortal
    Our next stop after Varna was Sofia where DevReach happens. DevReach is one of my favorite conferences in Europe because of sensible prices and strong speakers line-up. Also they have VIP-party after conference and this is good event to meet people you don’t see every day, have some discussion with speakers and find new friends. Our trip from Varna to Sofia took about 6.5 hours on bus. As I was tired from last evening it wasn’t problem for me as I slept half the trip. After smoking pause in Velike Tarnovo I watched movies from bus TV. We had supper later in city center Happy’s – place with good meat dishes and nice service. And next day it begun…. :) DevReach 2012 DevReach is held usually in Arena Mladost. It’s near airport and Telerik office. The event is organized by local MVP Martin Kulov together with Telerik. Two days of sessions with strong speakers is good reason enough for me to go to visit some event. Some topics covered by sessions: Windows 8 development web development SharePoint Windows Azure Windows Phone architecture Visual Studio Practically everybody can find some interesting session in every time slot. As the Arena is not huge it is very easy to go from one sessions to another if selected session for time slot is not what you expected. On the second floor of Arena there are many places where you can eat. There are simple chunk-food places like Burger King and also some restaurants. If you are hungry you will find something for your taste for sure. Also you can buy beer if it is too hot outside :) Weather was very good for October – practically Estonian summer – 25C and over. Sessions I visited Here is the list of sessions I visited at DevReach 2012: DevReach 2012 Opening & Welcome Messsage with Martin Kulov and Stephen Forte Principled N-Tier Solution Design with Steve Smith Data Patterns for the Cloud with Brian Randell .NET Garbage Collection Performance Tips with Sasha Goldshtein Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform with Ido Flatow It’s a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications with Charles Nurse Web Application Architecture – Lessons Learned from Adobe Brackets with Brian Rinaldi Demystifying Visual Studio 2012 Performance Tools with Martin Kulov SPvNext – A Look At All the Exciting And New Features In SharePoint with Sahil Malik Portable Libraries – Why You Should Care with Lino Tadros I missed some sessions because of some death march projects that are going and that I have to coordinate but it was not big loss as I had time to walk around in session venue neighborhood and see Sofia Business Park. Next year again! I will be there again next year and hopefully more guys from Estonia will join me. I think it’s good idea to take short vacation for DevReach time and do things like we did this time – Bucharest, Varna, Sofia. It’s only good idea to plan some more free time so we are not very much in hurry and also we have no work stuff to do on the trip. This far this trip has been one of best trips I have organized and I will go and meet all those guys in this region again! :)

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  • A temporary disagreement

    - by Tony Davis
    Last month, Phil Factor caused a furore amongst some MVPs with an article that attempted to offer simple advice to developers regarding the use of table variables, versus local and global temporary tables, in their code. Phil makes clear that the table variables do come with some fairly major limitations.no distribution statistics, no parallel query plans for queries that modify table variables.but goes on to suggest that for reasonably small-scale strategic uses, and with a bit of due care and testing, table variables are a "good thing". Not everyone shares his opinion; in fact, I imagine he was rather aghast to learn that there were those felt his article was akin to pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it into the database; table variables should be avoided in almost all cases, according to their advice, in favour of temp tables. In other words, a fairly major feature of SQL Server should be more-or-less 'off limits' to developers. The problem with temp tables is that, because they are scoped either in the procedure or the connection, it is easy to allow them to hang around for too long, eating up precious memory and bulking up the shared tempdb database. Unless they are explicitly dropped, global temporary tables, and local temporary tables created within a connection rather than within a stored procedure, will persist until the connection is closed or, with connection pooling, until the connection is reused. It's also quite common with ASP.NET applications to have connection leaks, as Bill Vaughn explains in his chapter in the "SQL Server Deep Dives" book, meaning that the web page exits without closing the connection object, maybe due to an error condition. This will then hang around in the heap for what might be hours before picked up by the garbage collector. Table variables are much safer in this regard, since they are batch-scoped and so are cleaned up automatically once the batch is complete, which also means that they are intuitive to use for the developer because they conform to scoping rules that are closer to those in procedural code. On the surface then, an ideal way to deal with issues related to tempdb memory hogging. So why did Phil qualify his recommendation to use Table Variables? This is another of those cases where, like scalar UDFs and table-valued multi-statement UDFs, developers can sometimes get into trouble with a relatively benign-looking feature, due to way it's been implemented in SQL Server. Once again the biggest problem is how they are handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer, which can make very poor choices for JOIN orders and so on, in the absence of statistics, especially when joining to tables with highly-skewed data. The resulting execution plans can be horrible, as will be the resulting performance. If the JOIN is to a large table, that will hurt. Ideally, Microsoft would simply fix this issue so that developers can't get burned in this way; they've been around since SQL Server 2000, so Microsoft has had a bit of time to get it right. As I commented in regard to UDFs, when developers discover issues like with such standard features, the database becomes an alien planet to them, where death lurks around each corner, and they continue to avoid these "killer" features years after the problems have been eventually resolved. In the meantime, what is the right approach? Is it to say "hammers can kill, don't ever use hammers", or is it to try to explain, as Phil's article and follow-up blog post have tried to do, what the feature was intended for, why care must be applied in its use, and so enable developers to make properly-informed decisions, without requiring them to delve deep into the inner workings of SQL Server? Cheers, Tony.

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  • SharePoint Saturday DC

    - by Mark Rackley
    Wow… did you see this thing? 927 attendees? An exhibition hall full of vendors? 94 speakers? 100 sessions?? Insane is a word that comes to mind… SharePoint Saturday DC was definitely epic as far as SharePoint Saturdays go. I got to catch up with a lot of friends and make some new ones.  Met a couple of fans of the blog (hello ladies…;))  Did you know that people actually read this thing? I guess that means I need to stop putting so much garbage on here and more content. I’ll get right on that as soon as I find out how to add 6 hours to each day. Anyway, once again I did my “Wrapping Your Head Around the SharePoint Beast” session.  I tweaked it even more from Huntsville and presented to a packed room with some people sitting on the floor and standing in the aisles. It was a great crowd, very interactive and they seemed interested at least. Thank you guys so much for attending and please feel free to tell me of any suggestions you have to make the presentation better.  This is one of the presentations that will probably never die. Everyone beginning SharePoint development needs a good introduction and starting point. My goal is to make this THE session to see on the subject. So, a little interesting data about my class. Half of the room was brand new to SharePoint and only one person was using 2010. That tells me that this session still has legs and that 2007 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  I know my organization will be using 2007 for at least a couple more years. Oh yeah… the slide deck?  Here it is: SharePoint Saturday DC Slide Deck So, SharePoint Saturday was truly tremendous and if you weren’t there you missed out. @meetdux, @usher, and the rest of their crew did a spectacular job. You guys rock and are a huge asset to the community. Thanks for allowing me to speak. What’s up next for me?  I’m so glad you asked…. SHAREPOINT SATURDAY OZARKS IS JUNE 12TH! Although SharePoint Saturday Ozarks on June 12 in Harrison Arkansas will be a much more intimate event than DC, it promises to be a most memorable event. We’ve got over 30 speakers and sessions, some cool stuff to give away, and we’re going floating down the Buffalo River on the 13th. Let’s see you do THAT in DC.  :) Anyway, I hope to see you there and I would truly appreciate any help you can do to help publicize the event. We just got internet here in the hills and most people here are still looking for the “any” key….

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.” Originally published on blogs.oracle.com/javaone.

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  • Valuing "Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation"

    - by tom.spitz
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} I subscribe to the tenets put forth in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development - http://agilemanifesto.org. As Oracle's chief methodologist, that might seem a self-deprecating attitude. After all, the agile manifesto tells us that we should value "individuals and interactions" over "processes and tools." My job includes process development. I also subscribe to ideas put forth in a number of subsequent works including Balancing Agility and Discipline: A Guide for the Perplexed (Boehm/Turner, Addison-Wesley) and Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (Highsmith, Addison-Wesley). Both of these books talk about finding the right balance between "agility and discipline" or between a "predictive and adaptive" project approach. So there still seems to be a place for us in creating the Oracle Unified Method (OUM) to become the "single method framework that supports the successful implementation of every Oracle product." After all, the real idea is to apply just enough ceremony and produce just enough documentation to suit the needs of the particular project that supports an enterprise in moving toward its desired future state. The thing I've been struggling with - and the thing I'd like to hear from you about right now - is the prevalence of an ongoing obsession with "documents." OUM provides a comprehensive set of guidance for an iterative and incremental approach to engineering and implementing software systems. Our intent is first to support the information technology system implementation and, as necessary, support the creation of documentation. OUM, therefore, includes a supporting set of document templates. Our guidance is to employ those templates, sparingly, as needed; not create piles of documentation that you're not gonna (sic) need. In other words, don't serve the method, make the method serve you. Yet, there seems to be a "gimme" mentality in some circles that if you give me a sample document - or better yet - a repository of samples - then I will be able to do anything cheaply and quickly. The notion is certainly appealing AND reuse can save time. Plus, documents are a lowest common denominator way of packaging reusable stuff. However, without sustained investment and management I've seen "reuse repositories" turn quickly into garbage heaps. So, I remain a skeptic. I agree that providing document examples that promote consistency is helpful. However, there may be too much emphasis on the documents themselves and not enough on creating a system that meets the evolving needs of the business. How can we shift the emphasis toward working software and away from our dependency on documents - especially on large, complex implementation projects - while still supporting the need for documentation? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

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  • Game Object Factory: Fixing Memory Leaks

    - by Bunkai.Satori
    Dear all, this is going to be tough: I have created a game object factory that generates objects of my wish. However, I get memory leaks which I can not fix. Memory leaks are generated by return new Object(); in the bottom part of the code sample. static BaseObject * CreateObjectFunc() { return new Object(); } How and where to delete the pointers? I wrote bool ReleaseClassType(). Despite the factory works well, ReleaseClassType() does not fix memory leaks. bool ReleaseClassTypes() { unsigned int nRecordCount = vFactories.size(); for (unsigned int nLoop = 0; nLoop < nRecordCount; nLoop++ ) { // if the object exists in the container and is valid, then render it if( vFactories[nLoop] != NULL) delete vFactories[nLoop](); } return true; } Before taking a look at the code below, let me help you in that my CGameObjectFactory creates pointers to functions creating particular object type. The pointers are stored within vFactories vector container. I have chosen this way because I parse an object map file. I have object type IDs (integer values) which I need to translate them into real objects. Because I have over 100 different object data types, I wished to avoid continuously traversing very long Switch() statement. Therefore, to create an object, I call vFactoriesnEnumObjectTypeID via CGameObjectFactory::create() to call stored function that generates desired object. The position of the appropriate function in the vFactories is identical to the nObjectTypeID, so I can use indexing to access the function. So the question remains, how to proceed with garbage collection and avoid reported memory leaks? #ifndef GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS #define GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS //#include "MemoryManager.h" #include <vector> template <typename BaseObject> class CGameObjectFactory { public: // cleanup and release registered object data types bool ReleaseClassTypes() { unsigned int nRecordCount = vFactories.size(); for (unsigned int nLoop = 0; nLoop < nRecordCount; nLoop++ ) { // if the object exists in the container and is valid, then render it if( vFactories[nLoop] != NULL) delete vFactories[nLoop](); } return true; } // register new object data type template <typename Object> bool RegisterClassType(unsigned int nObjectIDParam ) { if(vFactories.size() < nObjectIDParam) vFactories.resize(nObjectIDParam); vFactories[nObjectIDParam] = &CreateObjectFunc<Object>; return true; } // create new object by calling the pointer to the appropriate type function BaseObject* create(unsigned int nObjectIDParam) const { return vFactories[nObjectIDParam](); } // resize the vector array containing pointers to function calls bool resize(unsigned int nSizeParam) { vFactories.resize(nSizeParam); return true; } private: //DECLARE_HEAP; template <typename Object> static BaseObject * CreateObjectFunc() { return new Object(); } typedef BaseObject*(*factory)(); std::vector<factory> vFactories; }; //DEFINE_HEAP_T(CGameObjectFactory, "Game Object Factory"); #endif // GAMEOBJECTFACTORY_H_UNIPIXELS

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  • Talking JavaOne with Rock Star Kirk Pepperdine

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Kirk Pepperdine is not only a JavaOne Rock Star but a Java Champion and a highly regarded expert in Java performance tuning who works as a consultant, educator, and author. He is the principal consultant at Kodewerk Ltd. He speaks frequently at conferences and co-authored the Ant Developer's Handbook. In the rapidly shifting world of information technology, Pepperdine, as much as anyone, keeps up with what's happening with Java performance tuning. Pepperdine will participate in the following sessions: CON5405 - Are Your Garbage Collection Logs Speaking to You? BOF6540 - Java Champions and JUG Leaders Meet Oracle Executives (with Jeff Genender, Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Stahl, Georges Saab) HOL6500 - Finding and Solving Java Deadlocks (with Heinz Kabutz, Ellen Kraffmiller Martijn Verburg, Jeff Genender, and Henri Tremblay) I asked him what technological changes need to be taken into account in performance tuning. “The volume of data we're dealing with just seems to be getting bigger and bigger all the time,” observed Pepperdine. “A couple of years ago you'd never think of needing a heap that was 64g, but today there are deployments where the heap has grown to 256g and tomorrow there are plans for heaps that are even larger. Dealing with all that data simply requires more horse power and some very specialized techniques. In some cases, teams are trying to push hardware to the breaking point. Under those conditions, you need to be very clever just to get things to work -- let alone to get them to be fast. We are very quickly moving from a world where everything happens in a transaction to one where if you were to even consider using a transaction, you've lost." When asked about the greatest misconceptions about performance tuning that he currently encounters, he said, “If you have a performance problem, you should start looking at code at the very least and for that extra step, whip out an execution profiler. I'm not going to say that I never use execution profilers or look at code. What I will say is that execution profilers are effective for a small subset of performance problems and code is literally the last thing you should look at.And what is the most exciting thing happening in the world of Java today? “Interesting question because so many people would say that nothing exciting is happening in Java. Some might be disappointed that a few features have slipped in terms of scheduling. But I'd disagree with the first group and I'm not so concerned about the slippage because I still see a lot of exciting things happening. First, lambda will finally be with us and with lambda will come better ways.” For JavaOne, he is proctoring for Heinz Kabutz's lab. “I'm actually looking forward to that more than I am to my own talk,” he remarked. “Heinz will be the third non-Sun/Oracle employee to present a lab and the first since Oracle began hosting JavaOne. He's got a great message. He's spent a ton of time making sure things are going to work, and we've got a great team of proctors to help out. After that, getting my talk done, the Java Champion's panel session and then kicking back and just meeting up and talking to some Java heads."Finally, what should Java developers know that they currently do not know? “’Write Once, Run Everywhere’ is a great slogan and Java has come closer to that dream than any other technology stack that I've used. That said, different hardware bits work differently and as hard as we try, the JVM can't hide all the differences. Plus, if we are to get good performance we need to work with our hardware and not against it. All this implies that Java developers need to know more about the hardware they are deploying to.”

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  • Let Me Show You Something: Instagram, Vine and Snapchat for Brands

    - by Mike Stiles
    While brands are well aware of how much more impactful images are than text-only posts on social channels, today you’re additionally being presented with platform after additional platform for hosting, doctoring and sharing photos and videos.  Can you play in every sandbox? And if you do, can you be brilliant on all of them? As has usually been the case, so far brands are sticking their toes into new platforms while not actually committing to them, or strategizing for them, or resourcing them. TrackMaven found of the 123 F500 companies using Instagram, only 22% of them are active on it. Likewise, research from Simply Measured found brands are indeed jumping in, with the number establishing a presence on Instagram up 55% over the past year. Users want them there…brand engagement has exploded 350%, and over 1/3 of the top brands have at least 10,000 followers. BUT…the top 10 brands are generating 33% of all posts, reaping 83% of all engagement. Things are also growing on Twitter’s Vine, the 6-second looping video app that hit 40 million users in August. The 7th Chamber says 5 tweets a second contain a Vine link. Other studies say branded Vines are 4 times more likely to be shared and seen than rank-and-file branded videos. Why? Users know that even if a video is pure junk, they won’t get robbed of too much of their valuable time. Vine is always upgrading so you can make sure your videos are worth viewers’ time. You can now edit videos, and save & work on several projects concurrently. What you can’t do is upload a finely crafted video into Vine, but you can do that with Instagram. The key to success? Same as with all other content; make it of value. Deliver a laugh or a lesson or both. How-to, behind the scenes peeks, contests, demos, all make sense in the short video format. Or follow Nash Grier’s example, which is to just have fun with and connect to your viewers, earning their trust that your next Vine will be as good as the last. Nash is only 15, has over 1.4 million followers, and adds about 100,000 a week. He broke out when one of his videos was re-Vined by some other kid with 300,000 followers. Make good stuff, get it in front of influencers, and your brand Vines could break out as well. Then there’s Snapchat, the “this photo will self destruct” platform. How can that be of use to brands besides offering coupons that really expire? The jury is out. But with an audience of over 100 million and a valuation of $800 million, media-with-a-time-limit is compelling. Now there’s “Snapchat Stories” that can last 24 hours and be shared to the public at large. You might be able to capitalize on how much more focus gets put on content when there’s a time limit on its availability. The underlying truth to all of this is, these are all tools. Very cool, feature rich tools, but tools. You can give the exact same art kit to 5 different people and you’d get back 5 very different works, ranging from worthless garbage to masterpiece. Brands are being called upon to be still and moving image artists. That’s what your customers are used to seeing, from a variety of sources. Commit to communicating with them accordingly. @mikestiles Photo: stock.xchng

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  • SharePoint For Newbie Developers: Code Scope

    - by Mark Rackley
    So, I continue to try to come up with diagrams and information to help new SharePoint developers wrap their heads around this SharePoint beast, especially when those newer to development are on my team. To that end, I drew up the below diagram to help some of our junior devs understand where/when code is being executed in SharePoint at a high level. Note that I say “High Level”… This is a simplistic diagram that can get a LOT more complicated if you want to dive in deeper.  For the purposes of my lesson it served its purpose well. So, please no comments from you peanut gallery about information 3 levels down that’s missing unless it adds to the discussion.  Thanks So, the diagram below details where code is executed on a page load and gives the basic flow of the page load. There are actually many more steps, but again, we are staying high level here. I just know someone is still going to say something like “Well.. actually… the dlls are getting executed when…”  Anyway, here’s the diagram with some information I like to point out: Code Scope / Where it is executed So, looking at the diagram we see that dlls and XSL are executed on the server and that JavaScript/jQuery are executed on the client. This is the main thing I like to point out for the following reasons: XSL (for the most part) is faster than JavaScript I actually get this question a lot. Since XSL is executed on the server less data is getting passed over the wire and a beefier machine (hopefully) is doing the processing. The outcome of course is better performance. When You are using jQuery and making Web Service calls you are building XML strings and sending them to the server, then ALL the results come back and the client machine has to parse through the XML and use what it needs and ignore the rest (and there is a lot of garbage that comes back from SharePoint Web Service calls). XSL and JavaScript cannot work together in the same scope Let me clarify. JavaScript can send data back to SharePoint in postbacks that XSL can then use. XSL can output JavaScript and initiate JavaScript variables.  However, XSL cannot call a JavaScript method to get a value and JavaScript cannot directly interact with XSL and call its templates. They are executed in there scope only. No crossing of boundaries here. So, what does this all mean? Well, nothing too deep. This is just some basic fundamental information that all SharePoint devs need to understand. It will help you determine what is the best solution for your specific development situation and it will help the new guys understand why they get an error when trying to call a JavaScript Function from within XSL.  Let me know if you think quick little blogs like this are helpful or just add to the noise. I could probably put together several more that are similar.  As always, thanks for stopping by, hope you learned something new.

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  • Learn Many Languages

    - by Jeff Foster
    My previous blog, Deliberate Practice, discussed the need for developers to “sharpen their pencil” continually, by setting aside time to learn how to tackle problems in different ways. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a contested and somewhat-controversial concept from language theory, seems to hold reasonably true when applied to programming languages. It states that: “The structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.” If you’re constrained by a single programming language, the one that dominates your day job, then you only have the tools of that language at your disposal to think about and solve a problem. For example, if you’ve only ever worked with Java, you would never think of passing a function to a method. A good developer needs to learn many languages. You may never deploy them in production, you may never ship code with them, but by learning a new language, you’ll have new ideas that will transfer to your current “day-job” language. With the abundant choices in programming languages, how does one choose which to learn? Alan Perlis sums it up best. “A language that doesn‘t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing“ With that in mind, here’s a selection of languages that I think are worth learning and that have certainly changed the way I think about tackling programming problems. Clojure Clojure is a Lisp-based language running on the Java Virtual Machine. The unique property of Lisp is homoiconicity, which means that a Lisp program is a Lisp data structure, and vice-versa. Since we can treat Lisp programs as Lisp data structures, we can write our code generation in the same style as our code. This gives Lisp a uniquely powerful macro system, and makes it ideal for implementing domain specific languages. Clojure also makes software transactional memory a first-class citizen, giving us a new approach to concurrency and dealing with the problems of shared state. Haskell Haskell is a strongly typed, functional programming language. Haskell’s type system is far richer than C# or Java, and allows us to push more of our application logic to compile-time safety. If it compiles, it usually works! Haskell is also a lazy language – we can work with infinite data structures. For example, in a board game we can generate the complete game tree, even if there are billions of possibilities, because the values are computed only as they are needed. Erlang Erlang is a functional language with a strong emphasis on reliability. Erlang’s approach to concurrency uses message passing instead of shared variables, with strong support from both the language itself and the virtual machine. Processes are extremely lightweight, and garbage collection doesn’t require all processes to be paused at the same time, making it feasible for a single program to use millions of processes at once, all without the mental overhead of managing shared state. The Benefits of Multilingualism By studying new languages, even if you won’t ever get the chance to use them in production, you will find yourself open to new ideas and ways of coding in your main language. For example, studying Haskell has taught me that you can do so much more with types and has changed my programming style in C#. A type represents some state a program should have, and a type should not be able to represent an invalid state. I often find myself refactoring methods like this… void SomeMethod(bool doThis, bool doThat) { if (!(doThis ^ doThat)) throw new ArgumentException(“At least one arg should be true”); if (doThis) DoThis(); if (doThat) DoThat(); } …into a type-based solution, like this: enum Action { DoThis, DoThat, Both }; void SomeMethod(Action action) { if (action == Action.DoThis || action == Action.Both) DoThis(); if (action == Action.DoThat || action == Action.Both) DoThat(); } At this point, I’ve removed the runtime exception in favor of a compile-time check. This is a trivial example, but is just one of many ideas that I’ve taken from one language and implemented in another.

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  • PCI Encryption Key Management

    - by Unicorn Bob
    (Full disclosure: I'm already an active participant here and at StackOverflow, but for reasons that should hopefully be obvious, I'm choosing to ask this particular question anonymously). I currently work for a small software shop that produces software that's sold commercially to manage small- to mid-size business in a couple of fairly specialized industries. Because these industries are customer-facing, a large portion of the software is related to storing and managing customer information. In particular, the storage (and securing) of customer credit card information. With that, of course, comes PCI compliance. To make a long story short, I'm left with a couple of questions about why certain things were done the way they were, and I'm unfortunately without much of a resource at the moment. This is a very small shop (I report directly to the owner, as does the only other full-time employee), and the owner doesn't have an answer to these questions, and the previous developer is...err...unavailable. Issue 1: Periodic Re-encryption As of now, the software prompts the user to do a wholesale re-encryption of all of the sensitive information in the database (basically credit card numbers and user passwords) if either of these conditions is true: There are any NON-encrypted pieces of sensitive information in the database (added through a manual database statement instead of through the business object, for example). This should not happen during the ordinary use of the software. The current key has been in use for more than a particular period of time. I believe it's 12 months, but I'm not certain of that. The point here is that the key "expires". This is my first foray into commercial solution development that deals with PCI, so I am unfortunately uneducated on the practices involved. Is there some aspect of PCI compliance that mandates (or even just strongly recommends) periodic key updating? This isn't a huge issue for me other than I don't currently have a good explanation to give to end users if they ask why they are being prompted to run it. Question 1: Is the concept of key expiration standard, and, if so, is that simply industry-standard or an element of PCI? Issue 2: Key Storage Here's my real issue...the encryption key is stored in the database, just obfuscated. The key is padded on the left and right with a few garbage bytes and some bits are twiddled, but fundamentally there's nothing stopping an enterprising person from examining our (dotfuscated) code, determining the pattern used to turn the stored key into the real key, then using that key to run amok. This seems like a horrible practice to me, but I want to make sure that this isn't just one of those "grin and bear it" practices that people in this industry have taken to. I have developed an alternative approach that would prevent such an attack, but I'm just looking for a sanity check here. Question 2: Is this method of key storage--namely storing the key in the database using an obfuscation method that exists in client code--normal or crazy? Believe me, I know that free advice is worth every penny that I've paid for it, nobody here is an attorney (or at least isn't offering legal advice), caveat emptor, etc. etc., but I'm looking for any input that you all can provide. Thank you in advance!

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  • Concurrent Affairs

    - by Tony Davis
    I once wrote an editorial, multi-core mania, on the conundrum of ever-increasing numbers of processor cores, but without the concurrent programming techniques to get anywhere near exploiting their performance potential. I came to the.controversial.conclusion that, while the problem loomed for all procedural languages, it was not a big issue for the vast majority of programmers. Two years later, I still think most programmers don't concern themselves overly with this issue, but I do think that's a bigger problem than I originally implied. Firstly, is the performance boost from writing code that can fully exploit all available cores worth the cost of the additional programming complexity? Right now, with quad-core processors that, at best, can make our programs four times faster, the answer is still no for many applications. But what happens in a few years, as the number of cores grows to 100 or even 1000? At this point, it becomes very hard to ignore the potential gains from exploiting concurrency. Possibly, I was optimistic to assume that, by the time we have 100-core processors, and most applications really needed to exploit them, some technology would be around to allow us to do so with relative ease. The ideal solution would be one that allows programmers to forget about the problem, in much the same way that garbage collection removed the need to worry too much about memory allocation. From all I can find on the topic, though, there is only a remote likelihood that we'll ever have a compiler that takes a program written in a single-threaded style and "auto-magically" converts it into an efficient, correct, multi-threaded program. At the same time, it seems clear that what is currently the most common solution, multi-threaded programming with shared memory, is unsustainable. As soon as a piece of state can be changed by a different thread of execution, the potential number of execution paths through your program grows exponentially with the number of threads. If you have two threads, each executing n instructions, then there are 2^n possible "interleavings" of those instructions. Of course, many of those interleavings will have identical behavior, but several won't. Not only does this make understanding how a program works an order of magnitude harder, but it will also result in irreproducible, non-deterministic, bugs. And of course, the problem will be many times worse when you have a hundred or a thousand threads. So what is the answer? All of the possible alternatives require a change in the way we write programs and, currently, seem to be plagued by performance issues. Software transactional memory (STM) applies the ideas of database transactions, and optimistic concurrency control, to memory. However, working out how to break down your program into sufficiently small transactions, so as to avoid contention issues, isn't easy. Another approach is concurrency with actors, where instead of having threads share memory, each thread runs in complete isolation, and communicates with others by passing messages. It simplifies concurrent programs but still has performance issues, if the threads need to operate on the same large piece of data. There are doubtless other possible solutions that I haven't mentioned, and I would love to know to what extent you, as a developer, are considering the problem of multi-core concurrency, what solution you currently favor, and why. Cheers, Tony.

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  • In WPF: Children.Remove or Children.Clear doesn't free objects

    - by Bart Roozendaal
    I create some UIElements from code behind and was anticipating the garbage collection to clear up stuff. However, the objects are not free-ed at the time I expected it. I was expecting them to be freeed at RemoveAt(0), but they are only freed at the end of the program. How can I make the objects be freed when removed from the Children collection of the Canvas? <Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.MainWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300" MouseDown="Window_MouseDown"> <Grid> <Canvas x:Name="main" /> </Grid> </Window> The code behind is: public partial class MainWindow : Window { public MainWindow() { InitializeComponent(); } private void Window_MouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { if (main.Children.Count == 0) main.Children.Add(new MyControl() { Background = Brushes.Yellow, Width = 100, Height = 50 }); else main.Children.RemoveAt(0); } } public class MyControl : UserControl { ~MyControl() { Debug.WriteLine("Goodbye"); } }

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  • App using MonoTouch Core Graphics mysteriously crashes

    - by Stephen Ashley
    My app launches with a view controller and a simple view consisting of a button and a subview. When the user touches the button, the subview is populated with scrollviews that display the column headers, row headers, and cells of a spreadsheet. To draw the cells, I use CGBitmapContext to draw the cells, generate an image, and then put the image into the imageview contained in the scrollview that displays the cells. When I run the app on the iPad, it displays the cells just fine, and the scrollview lets the user scroll around in the spreadsheet without any problems. If the user touches the button a second time, the spreadsheet redraws and continues to work perfectly, If, however, the user touches the button a third time, the app crashes. There is no exception information display in the Application Output window. My first thought was that the successive button pushes were using up all the available memory, so I overrode the DidReceiveMemoryWarning method in the view controller and used a breakpoint to confirm that this method was not getting called. My next thought was that the CGBitmapContext was not getting released and looked for a Monotouch equivalent of Objective C's CGContextRelease() function. The closest I could find was the CGBitmapContext instance method Dispose(), which I called, without solving the problem. In order to free up as much memory as possible (in case I was somehow running out of memory without tripping a warning), I tried forcing garbage collection each time I finished using a CGBitmapContext. This made the problem worse. Now the program would crash moments after displaying the spreadsheet the first time. This caused me to wonder whether the Garbage Collector was somehow collecting something necessary to the continued display of graphics on the screen. I would be grateful for any suggestions on further avenues to investigate for the cause of these crashes. I have included the source code for the SpreadsheetView class. The relevant method is DrawSpreadsheet(), which is called when the button is touched. Thank you for your assistance on this matter. Stephen Ashley public class SpreadsheetView : UIView { public ISpreadsheetMessenger spreadsheetMessenger = null; public UIScrollView cellsScrollView = null; public UIImageView cellsImageView = null; public SpreadsheetView(RectangleF frame) : base() { Frame = frame; BackgroundColor = Constants.backgroundBlack; AutosizesSubviews = true; } public void DrawSpreadsheet() { UInt16 RowHeaderWidth = spreadsheetMessenger.RowHeaderWidth; UInt16 RowHeaderHeight = spreadsheetMessenger.RowHeaderHeight; UInt16 RowCount = spreadsheetMessenger.RowCount; UInt16 ColumnHeaderWidth = spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnHeaderWidth; UInt16 ColumnHeaderHeight = spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnHeaderHeight; UInt16 ColumnCount = spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnCount; // Add the corner UIImageView cornerView = new UIImageView(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight)); cornerView.BackgroundColor = Constants.headingColor; CGColorSpace cornerColorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext cornerContext = null; IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(RowHeaderWidth * ColumnHeaderHeight * 4); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory."); try { cornerColorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); cornerContext = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight, 8, 4 * RowHeaderWidth, cornerColorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); cornerContext.SetFillColorWithColor(Constants.headingColor.CGColor); cornerContext.FillRect(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight)); cornerView.Image = UIImage.FromImage(cornerContext.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (cornerContext != null) { cornerContext.Dispose(); cornerContext = null; } if (cornerColorSpace != null) { cornerColorSpace.Dispose(); cornerColorSpace = null; } } cornerView.Image = DrawBottomRightCorner(cornerView.Image); AddSubview(cornerView); // Add the cellsScrollView cellsScrollView = new UIScrollView (new RectangleF(RowHeaderWidth, ColumnHeaderHeight, Frame.Width - RowHeaderWidth, Frame.Height - ColumnHeaderHeight)); cellsScrollView.ContentSize = new SizeF (ColumnCount * ColumnHeaderWidth, RowCount * RowHeaderHeight); Size iContentSize = new Size((int)cellsScrollView.ContentSize.Width, (int)cellsScrollView.ContentSize.Height); cellsScrollView.BackgroundColor = UIColor.Black; AddSubview(cellsScrollView); CGColorSpace colorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext context = null; CGGradient gradient = null; UIImage image = null; int bytesPerRow = 4 * iContentSize.Width; int byteCount = bytesPerRow * iContentSize.Height; buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(byteCount); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory."); try { colorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); context = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height, 8, 4 * iContentSize.Width, colorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); float[] components = new float[] {.75f, .75f, .75f, 1f, .25f, .25f, .25f, 1f}; float[] locations = new float[]{0f, 1f}; gradient = new CGGradient(colorSpace, components, locations); PointF startPoint = new PointF(0f, (float)iContentSize.Height); PointF endPoint = new PointF((float)iContentSize.Width, 0f); context.DrawLinearGradient(gradient, startPoint, endPoint, 0); context.SetLineWidth(Constants.lineWidth); context.BeginPath(); for (UInt16 i = 1; i <= RowCount; i++) { context.MoveTo (0f, iContentSize.Height - i * RowHeaderHeight + (Constants.lineWidth/2)); context.AddLineToPoint((float)iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height - i * RowHeaderHeight + (Constants.lineWidth/2)); } for (UInt16 j = 1; j <= ColumnCount; j++) { context.MoveTo((float)j * ColumnHeaderWidth - Constants.lineWidth/2, (float)iContentSize.Height); context.AddLineToPoint((float)j * ColumnHeaderWidth - Constants.lineWidth/2, 0f); } context.StrokePath(); image = UIImage.FromImage(context.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (gradient != null) { gradient.Dispose(); gradient = null; } if (context != null) { context.Dispose(); context = null; } if (colorSpace != null) { colorSpace.Dispose(); colorSpace = null; } // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } UIImage finalImage = ActivateCell(1, 1, image); finalImage = ActivateCell(0, 0, finalImage); cellsImageView = new UIImageView(finalImage); cellsImageView.Frame = new RectangleF(0f, 0f, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height); cellsScrollView.AddSubview(cellsImageView); } private UIImage ActivateCell(UInt16 column, UInt16 row, UIImage backgroundImage) { UInt16 ColumnHeaderWidth = (UInt16)spreadsheetMessenger.ColumnHeaderWidth; UInt16 RowHeaderHeight = (UInt16)spreadsheetMessenger.RowHeaderHeight; CGColorSpace cellColorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext cellContext = null; UIImage cellImage = null; IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(4 * ColumnHeaderWidth * RowHeaderHeight); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory: ActivateCell()"); try { cellColorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); // Create a bitmap the size of a cell cellContext = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, ColumnHeaderWidth, RowHeaderHeight, 8, 4 * ColumnHeaderWidth, cellColorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); // Paint it white cellContext.SetFillColorWithColor(UIColor.White.CGColor); cellContext.FillRect(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, ColumnHeaderWidth, RowHeaderHeight)); // Convert it to an image cellImage = UIImage.FromImage(cellContext.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (cellContext != null) { cellContext.Dispose(); cellContext = null; } if (cellColorSpace != null) { cellColorSpace.Dispose(); cellColorSpace = null; } // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } // Draw the border on the cell image cellImage = DrawBottomRightCorner(cellImage); CGColorSpace colorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext context = null; Size iContentSize = new Size((int)backgroundImage.Size.Width, (int)backgroundImage.Size.Height); buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(4 * iContentSize.Width * iContentSize.Height); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory: ActivateCell()."); try { colorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); // Set up a bitmap context the size of the whole grid context = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height, 8, 4 * iContentSize.Width, colorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); // Draw the original grid into the bitmap context.DrawImage(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, iContentSize.Width, iContentSize.Height), backgroundImage.CGImage); // Draw the cell image into the bitmap context.DrawImage(new RectangleF(column * ColumnHeaderWidth, iContentSize.Height - (row + 1) * RowHeaderHeight, ColumnHeaderWidth, RowHeaderHeight), cellImage.CGImage); // Convert the bitmap back to an image backgroundImage = UIImage.FromImage(context.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (context != null) { context.Dispose(); context = null; } if (colorSpace != null) { colorSpace.Dispose(); colorSpace = null; } // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } return backgroundImage; } private UIImage DrawBottomRightCorner(UIImage image) { int width = (int)image.Size.Width; int height = (int)image.Size.Height; float lineWidth = Constants.lineWidth; CGColorSpace colorSpace = null; CGBitmapContext context = null; UIImage returnImage = null; IntPtr buffer = Marshal.AllocHGlobal(4 * width * height); if (buffer == IntPtr.Zero) throw new OutOfMemoryException("Out of memory: DrawBottomRightCorner()."); try { colorSpace = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB(); context = new CGBitmapContext (buffer, width, height, 8, 4 * width, colorSpace, CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedFirst); context.DrawImage(new RectangleF(0f, 0f, width, height), image.CGImage); context.BeginPath(); context.MoveTo(0f, (int)(lineWidth/2f)); context.AddLineToPoint(width - (int)(lineWidth/2f), (int)(lineWidth/2f)); context.AddLineToPoint(width - (int)(lineWidth/2f), height); context.SetLineWidth(Constants.lineWidth); context.SetStrokeColorWithColor(UIColor.Black.CGColor); context.StrokePath(); returnImage = UIImage.FromImage(context.ToImage()); } finally { Marshal.FreeHGlobal(buffer); if (context != null){ context.Dispose(); context = null;} if (colorSpace != null){ colorSpace.Dispose(); colorSpace = null;} // GC.Collect(); //GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers(); } return returnImage; } }

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  • Writing a docx file to a BLOB using Java 1.4 inside Oracle 10g

    - by Jon Renaut
    I'm trying to generate a blank docx file using Java, add some text, then write it to a BLOB that I can return to our document processing engine (a custom mess of PL/SQL and Java). I have to use the 1.4 JVM inside Oracle 10g, so no Java 1.5 stuff. I don't have a problem writing the docx to a file on my local machine, but when I try to write to BLOB, I'm getting garbage. Am I doing something dumb? Any help is appreciated. Note in the code below, all the get[name]Xml() methods return an org.w3c.dom.Document. public void save(String fileName) throws Exception { ZipOutputStream zos = new ZipOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(fileName)); addEntry(zos, getDocumentXml(), "word/document.xml"); addEntry(zos, getContentTypesXml(), "[Content_Types].xml"); addEntry(zos, getRelsXml(), "_rels/.rels"); zos.flush(); zos.close(); } public java.sql.BLOB save() throws Exception { java.sql.Connection conn = DbUtilities.openConnection(); BLOB outBlob = BLOB.createTemporary(conn, true, BLOB.DURATION_SESSION); outBlob.open(BLOB.MODE_READWRITE); ZipOutputStream zos = new ZipOutputStream(outBlob.setBinaryStream(0L)); addEntry(zos, getDocumentXml(), "word/document.xml"); addEntry(zos, getContentTypesXml(), "[Content_Types].xml"); addEntry(zos, getRelsXml(), "_rels/.rels"); zos.flush(); zos.close(); return outBlob; } private void addEntry(ZipOutputStream zos, Document doc, String fileName) throws Exception { Transformer t = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer(); ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); t.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(baos)); ZipEntry ze = new ZipEntry(fileName); byte[] data = baos.toByteArray(); ze.setSize(data.length); zos.putNextEntry(ze); zos.write(data); zos.flush(); zos.closeEntry(); }

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  • Using Freepascal\Lazarus JSON Libraries

    - by Gizmo_the_Great
    I'm hoping for a bit of a "simpletons" demo\explanation for using Lazarus\Freepascal JSON parsing. I've asked a question here but all the replies are "read this" and none of them are really helping me get a grasp because the examples are bit too in-depth and I'm seeking a very simple example to help me understand how it works. In brief, my program reads an untyped binary file in chunks of 4096 bytes. The raw data then gets converted to ASCII and stored in a string. It then goes through the variable looking for certain patterns, which, it turned out, are JSON data structures. I've currently coded the parsing the hard way using Pos and ExtractANSIString etc. But I'vesince learnt that there are JSON libraries for Lazarus & FPC, namely fcl-json, fpjson, jsonparser, jsonscanner etc. https://bitbucket.org/reiniero/fpctwit/src http://fossies.org/unix/misc/fpcbuild-2.6.0.tar.gz:a/fpcbuild-2.6.0/fpcsrc/packages/fcl-json/src/ http://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/packages/fcl-json/examples/ However, I still can't quite work out HOW I read my string variable and parse it for JSON data and then access those JSON structures. Can anyone give me a very simple example, to help getting me going? My code so far (without JSON) is something like this: try SourceFile.Position := 0; while TotalBytesRead < SourceFile.Size do begin BytesRead := SourceFile.Read(Buffer,sizeof(Buffer)); inc(TotalBytesRead, BytesRead); StringContent := StripNonAsciiExceptCRLF(Buffer); // A custom function to strip out binary garbage leaving just ASCII readable text if Pos('MySearchValue', StringContent) > 0 then begin // Do the parsing. This is where I need to do the JSON stuff ...

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  • How to dispose a Writeable Bitmap? (WPF)

    - by Mario
    Some time ago i posted a question related to a WriteableBitmap memory leak, and though I received wonderful tips related to the problem, I still think there is a serious bug / (mistake made by me) / (Confusion) / (some other thing) here. So, here is my problem again: Suppose we have a WPF application with an Image and a button. The image's source is a really big bitmap (3600 * 4800 px), when it's shown at runtime the applicaton consumes ~90 MB. Now suppose i wish to instantiate a WriteableBitmap from the source of the image (the really big Image), when this happens the applications consumes ~220 MB. Now comes the tricky part, when the modifications to the image (through the WriteableBitmap) end, and all the references to the WriteableBitmap (at least those that I'm aware of) are destroyed (at the end of a method or by setting them to null) the memory used by the writeableBitmap should be freed and the application consumption should return to ~90 MB. The problem is that sometimes it returns, sometimes it does not. Here is a sample code: // The Image's source whas set previous to this event private void buttonTest_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { if (image.Source != null) { WriteableBitmap bitmap = new WriteableBitmap((BitmapSource)image.Source); bitmap.Lock(); bitmap.Unlock(); //image.Source = null; bitmap = null; } } As you can see the reference is local and the memory should be released at the end of the method (Or when the Garbage collector decides to do so). However, the app could consume ~224 MB until the end of the universe. Any help would be great.

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  • make my file readable as either Perl or HTML

    - by JoelFan
    In the spirit of the "Perl Preamble" where a script works properly whether executed by a shell script interpreter or the Perl interpreter... I have a Perl script which contains an embedded HTML document (as a "heredoc"), i.e.: #!/usr/bin/perl ... some perl code ... my $html = <<'END' ; <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> ... more HTML ... </html> END ... perl code that processes $html ... I would like to be able to work on the HTML that's inside the Perl script and check it out using a web browser, and only run the script when the HTML is the way I want. To accomplish this, I need the file to be openable both as an HTML file and as a Perl script. I have tried various tricks with Perl comments and HTML comments but can't get it quite perfect. It doesn't have to be "strictly legal" HTML... just displayable in a browser with no (or minimal) Perl garbage visible.

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  • image/jpeg returned by groovy/grails is OK on development system, but corrupt on prod system. What c

    - by ?????
    I have a groovy/grails application that needs to serve images It works fine on my dev box, the image is returned properly. Here's the start of the returned JPEG, as seen by od -cx 0000000 377 330 377 340 \0 020 J F I F \0 001 001 001 001 , d8ff e0ff 1000 464a 4649 0100 0101 2c01 but on the production box, there's some garbage in front, and the d8ff e0ff before the 1000 is missing 0000000 ? ** ** ? ** ** ? ** ** ? ** ** \0 020 J F bfef efbd bdbf bfef efbd bdbf 1000 464a 0000020 I F \0 001 001 001 \0 H \0 H \0 \0 ? ** ** ? 4649 0100 0101 4800 4800 0000 bfef efbd It's the exact same code. I just moved the .war over and run it on a different machine. (Isn't Java supposed to be write once, run everywhere?) Any ideas? An "encoding" problem? The code is sent to the response like this: response.contentType = "image/jpeg"; response.outputStream << out;

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  • Fast string suffix checking in C# (.NET 4.0)?

    - by ilitirit
    What is the fastest method of checking string suffixes in C#? I need to check each string in a large list (anywhere from 5000 to 100000 items) for a particular term. The term is guaranteed never to be embedded within the string. In other words, if the string contains the term, it will be at the end of the string. The string is also guaranteed to be longer than the suffix. Cultural information is not important. These are how different methods performed against 100000 strings (half of them have the suffix): 1. Substring Comparison - 13.60ms 2. String.Contains - 22.33ms 3. CompareInfo.IsSuffix - 24.60ms 4. String.EndsWith - 29.08ms 5. String.LastIndexOf - 30.68ms These are average times. [Edit] Forgot to mention that the strings also get put into separate lists, but this is not important. It does add to the running time though. On my system substring comparison (extracting the end of the string using the String.Substring method and comparing it to the suffix term) is consistently the fastest when tested against 100000 strings. The problem with using substring comparison though is that Garbage Collection can slow it down considerably (more than the other methods) because String.Substring creates new strings. The effect is not as bad in .NET 4.0 as it was in 3.5 and below, but it is still noticeable. In my tests, String.Substring performed consistently slower on sets of 12000-13000 strings. This will obviously differ between systems and implementations. [EDIT] Benchmark code: http://pastebin.com/smEtYNYN

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  • Making REST request using LWP::Simple

    - by Alienfluid
    I am trying to use LWP::Simple to make a GET request to a REST service. Here's the simple code: use LWP::Simple; $uri = "http://api.stackoverflow.com/0.8/questions/tagged/php"; $jsonresponse= get $uri; print $jsonresponse; On my local machine, running Ubuntu 10.4, and Perl version 5.10.1: farhan@farhan-lnx:~$ perl --version This is perl, v5.10.1 (*) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi I can get the correct response and have it printed on the screen. E.g.: farhan@farhan-lnx:~$ head -10 output.txt { "total": 1000, "page": 1, "pagesize": 30, "questions": [ { "tags": [ "php", "arrays", "coding-style" (... snipped ...) But on my host's machine to which I SSH into, I get garbage printed on the screen for the same exact code. I am assuming it has something to do with the encoding, but the REST service does not return the character set type in the response, so how do I force LWP::Simple to use the correct encoding? Any ideas what may be going on here? Here's the version of Perl on my host's machine: [dredd]$ perl --version This is perl, v5.8.8 built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi

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  • Why should we call SuppressFinalize when we dont have a destructor

    - by somaraj
    I have few Question for which I am not able to get a proper answer . 1) Why should we call SuppressFinalize in the Dispose function when we dont have a destructor . 2) Dispose and finalize are used for freeing resources before the object is garbage collected. Whether it is managed or unmanaged resource we need to free it , then why we need a condition inside the dispose funtion , saying pass 'true' when we call this overriden function from IDisposable:Dispose and pass false when called from a finalize. See the below code i copied from net. class Test : IDisposable { private bool isDisposed = false; ~Test() { Dispose(false); } protected void Dispose(bool disposing) { if (disposing) { // Code to dispose the managed resources of the class } // Code to dispose the un-managed resources of the class isDisposed = true; } public void Dispose() { Dispose(true); GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } } what if I remove the boolean protected Dispose function and implement the as below. class Test : IDisposable { private bool isDisposed = false; ~Test() { Dispose(); } public void Dispose() { // Code to dispose the managed resources of the class // Code to dispose the un-managed resources of the class isDisposed = true; // Call this since we have a destructor . what if , if we dont have one GC.SuppressFinalize(this); } }

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  • HTTP requests and Apache modules: Creative attack vectors

    - by pinkgothic
    Slightly unorthodox question here: I'm currently trying to break an Apache with a handful of custom modules. What spawned the testing is that Apache internally forwards requests that it considers too large (e.g. 1 MB trash) to modules hooked in appropriately, forcing them to deal with the garbage data - and lack of handling in the custom modules caused Apache in its entirety to go up in flames. Ouch, ouch, ouch. That particular issue was fortunately fixed, but the question's arisen whether or not there may be other similar vulnerabilities. Right now I have a tool at my disposal that lets me send a raw HTTP request to the server (or rather, raw data through an established TCP connection that could be interpreted as an HTTP request if it followed the form of one, e.g. "GET ...") and I'm trying to come up with other ideas. (TCP-level attacks like Slowloris and Nkiller2 are not my focus at the moment.) Does anyone have a few nice ideas how to confuse the server and/or its modules to the point of self-immolation? Broken UTF-8? (Though I doubt Apache cares about encoding - I imagine it just juggles raw bytes.) Stuff that is only barely too long, followed by a 0-byte, followed by junk? et cetera I don't consider myself a very good tester (I'm doing this by necessity and lack of manpower; I unfortunately don't even have a more than basic grasp of Apache internals that would help me along), which is why I'm hoping for an insightful response or two or three. Maybe some of you have done some similar testing for your own projects? (If stackoverflow is not the right place for this question, I apologise. Not sure where else to put it.)

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  • Use of SAX parser in Android - OutOfMemory Issue

    - by Sephy
    Hi everybody, I have been using a SAX parser for a while now to get data from various XML, but today i'm banging my head on a new problem with a hudge XML (compared to the previous ones . here around 12k lines) with a lot of repetitive items in it. Most of the time, the items are part of a block : <content> <item lbl="blabla"> <item lbl="blabla"/> <item lbl="blabla"/> </item> <item lbl="blabla"> <item lbl="blabla"/> <item lbl="blabla"/> <item lbl="blabla"/> <item lbl="blabla"/> <item lbl="blabla"/> <item lbl="blabla"/> </item> </content> The blabla part is of course changing...But, I would like to keep the structure of items (they are titles and subtitles). And for that, I append each blabla with a starting and ending tag blabla, where x is the position in the tree of items (1, 2, 3 or 4). The slightly problematic part is that with that, I'm creating thousands of useless objects and the garbage collector doesn't have time to clean after the parser, and the inevitable OutOfMemory comes in my face... I have no idea of how to deal with it; The best technique would be if I could take the whole content of , but i'm not sure that this is possible with a SAX parser. Any help is welcome and any solution deeply thanked...

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